of the Onondaga Historical Society, at Syracuse, and found (what
I had before surely surmised,) a simple, short, club-like fragment
of limestone, worn by running water to a form like a little fish.
"This it was and nothing more."

It is proposed--and very properly--that this Onondaga relic should
be submitted to the examination of Professor Hall, Agassiz, Leidz,
or some other of our geologists known to fame and infallible experts
in these matters. This were well. But there is another court which
I think, would pass quite as prompt a decision. I believe that a
sculptor, in examining this most singular specimen, would at once
recognize its artificial character. The devices for saving time
or for adding strength, partially cutting out the figure, are
sufficiently apparent in the object before us. The legs--with
their heavy thigh, the swollen knee portion, the swollen calf and
slender ankle, all touch on the outline length as they lie over
each other, with no open space between, or no point where one
folds down upon the other with a sharp line of contact of the two
surfaces. The same thing, too, is noticeable in the arms and in
the fingers of the hand, where the flesh, instead of sloping away--
one rounded surface finely leaving another--is cut down square,
as if some unnatural out growth of flesh had formed a uniting
portion beneath the member. This is a too common device in
the coarser grades of sculpture to escape notice here. Our
sculptor would certainly find fault with the very constrained
position of the body, its feet awkwardly crossed and its left
arm twisted rather than laid backward under its body, certainly
this is not the attitude in which a sculptor--a man of taste--would
place his handiwork. Still, may it not be an admissable theory,
that the oldtime artist was constrained in the form which he should